Daily News Digest January 17, 2024
Images of the Day:
Mike Luckovich: Place wrench on Bolt …
Since World War I, ‘the war to end all wars’, there have been perpetual wars for perpetual peace, this Laura Gray’s cartoon from the front page of The Militant August 18, 1945, Under the Banner Headline: “There Is No Peace”
Capitalism as a Failed System: World Capitalism Has Been Aware of the Comming Catastrophe of Global Warming Over 5 Decades Ago and Did Nothing!: Under Capitalism — Human Lives Don’t Matter Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading Racism, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, andThe Iron Heel! For Decades, Blacks Have Been Subjected to The Iron Heel! Currently, the US Capitalist Class is Divided Over When — Not If, to Apply It to Everyone! Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World!
Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1%, Who Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
Quote of the Day:
Black Genocide in the United States: In the United States, black genocide is the argument that the systemic mistreatment of African Americans by both the United States government and white Americans, both in the past and the present, amounts to genocide. The decades of lynchings and long-term racial discrimination were first formally described as genocide by a now-defunct organization, the Civil Rights Congress, in a petition which it submitted to the United Nations in 1951. In the 1960s, Malcolm X accused the US government of engaging in a genocide against black people, citing long-term injustice, cruelty, and violence against blacks by whites.[8][9]
Videos of the Day:
Why is There So Mch Debt The debt explosion: How neoliberalism fuels debt crises.
United States:
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich. Tax the Rich! — They Can Afford ford To Pay! Both Parties Support U.S. Capitalism’s Wars! (The Only War the Democrats Opposed was the Civil War!)
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both. — Louis D. Brandeis Quotes
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. MLK, Beyond Vietnam
MLK Was a Philosopher of Hope. He Reminds Us That Apathy Is a Dead End. On MLK Day, the U.S. should painfully interrogate its monumental failure to address systemic injustice. As we honor the 38th celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I feel a deep burning sense of unspeakable sadness in my soul — at other times, horror. Not much feels right in the world. To be a person who truly longs for collective justice, universal peace, shared love and compassion, and the end of hatred, it is not possible to remain content with the status quo, to be indifferent to oppression wherever it raises its ugly head, to see the results of poverty and remain silent, to remain unresponsive to the murder of innocent children around the world, ethnic cleansing and the march toward fascistic rule, as we see here in the United States and abroad.
The “Rules-Based International Order” If this is what the “rules-based international order” looks like, would we not, perhaps, be better off without it The “rules-based international order” has allowed the incineration of Gaza, and the bombing of Yemeni forces who are trying to stop it. The “rules-based international order” allowed hundreds of thousands of people to be killed by western-backed Saudi atrocities in Yemen. The “rules-based international order” allowed NATO powers to knowingly provoke a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine. The “rules-based international order” allowed western powers and their regional partners to plunge Syria into a horrific civil war by flooding the nation with heavily armed fascistic extremist factions. The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US to invade and occupy a vast stretch of Syrian territory in order to control the nation’s natural resources and prevent reconstruction. The “rules-based international order” allowed Libya to be turned into a chaotic hellscape after western-backed forces killed Gaddafi following a long-desired western regime change operation disguised as “humanitarian intervention”.
U.S. Funded Palestinian Genocide:
100 Days Into Genocide, Nearly 100,000 Palestinians Killed, Injured or Missing “No one will stop us; not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else calling the ICJ,” declared Netanyahu.
Key Developments
- Israel’s Netanyahu says, “No one will stop us; not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else calling the International Court of Justice (ICJ).”
- Yoav Gallant, Minister of Defense, storms out of war cabinet meeting on Saturday evening after tense argument with Netanyahu.
- Paltel says Israeli air strike killed two workers, Bahaa Al-Rayes and Nader Abu Hajjaj, in their vehicle while they were in Khan Yunis to fix internet blackout.
- Heavy rain and strong winds knock down tents housing displaced Palestinians and flood shelters and homes in Gaza.
- Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA chief, says “the massive death, destruction, displacement, hunger, loss, and grief of the last 100 days are staining our shared humanity.”
- Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor: “Just About 100,000 Palestinians have been killed, reported missing, or wounded since 7 October 2023 due to Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip”
- Overnight, Palestinians recovered bodies of 50 people after Israeli airstrikes bombed three-story residential building housing families of Al-Shubaki, Al-Zoukh, Al-Hassouna, and Al-Qassim in central Gaza City.
- Gaza’s Ministry of Health says Israeli forces killed 337 medical staff and arrested 99 others since October, bombed 203 medical centers and clinics, destroyed 121 ambulances and damaged 30 hospitals, forcing it to stop operating completely.
- Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says International Criminal Court (ICC) agreed to investigate Israel’s crimes against journalists in Gaza.
- Namibia criticizes Germany who said it will interfere as third party to provide evidence in the ICJ case in support of Israel.
Israel’s War on Palestine and the Global Upsurge Against It Hundreds of millions of people across the world have been deeply moved by the atrocity of the Israeli war on Palestine. Millions have attended marches and protests, many of them participating in such demonstrations for the first time in their lives. Social media, in almost all the world’s languages, is saturated with memes and posts about this or that terrible action. Some people focus on the Israeli attack on Palestinian children, others on the illegal targeting of Gaza’s health infrastructure, and yet others point to the annihilation of at least four hundred families (more than ten people in each family killed). The focus of attention does not seem to be diminishing. Holidays in December went by, but the intensity of the protests and the posts remained steady. No attempt by social media companies to turn the algorithm against the Palestinians succeeded, no attempt to ban the protests—even the display of the Palestinian flag—worked. Accusations of antisemitism fell flat and demands for the condemnation of Hamas were dismissed. This is a new mood, a new kind of attitude toward the Palestinian struggle.
At the Hague, Israel Mounted a Defense Based in an Alternate Reality Israel’s rebuttal against charges of genocide was as weak in offering documented facts as South Africa’s case was powerful. A TEAM OF Israeli lawyers and officials presented their defense at The Hague on Friday in the second day of the genocide case brought before the International Court of Justice by the government of South Africa. The lawyers portrayed Israel as the actual victim of genocide, not Gaza, accused South Africa of supporting Hamas, and painted South Africa’s government as functioning as the legal arm of the Palestinian militants who led the deadly raids into Israel on October 7. Israel benefitted greatly from the fact that there was no cross examination permitted or debate allowed during these proceedings. It embarked on a bold mission to do in a court of international law what its military and political officials have done day and night throughout the course of this war against Gaza: unleash a deluge of what was known within the Trump administration as “alternative facts.”
Environment:
One of Many Ways to Begin to End Global Warming: Expose ‘Greenwashing’ — Tax the Polluters 100%! After World War II Rosa Luxenburg Coined the Slogan: ‘S0cialism or Barbaism’! Now the Slogan Should Be: ‘Ecosocialism or Ecocide’!
Capitalism is Killing the Planet – It’s Time to Stop Buying Into Our Own Destruction Instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and level down, not up There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. It’s that we always put our survival first. This is true of other species. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter, they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it: migrating or hibernating, for example. Humans are a different matter. When faced with an impending or chronic threat, such as climate or ecological breakdown, we seem to go out of our way to compromise our survival. We convince ourselves that it’s not so serious, or even that it isn’t happening. We double down on destruction, swapping our ordinary cars for SUVs, jetting to Oblivia on a long-haul flight, burning it all up in a final frenzy. In the back of our minds, there’s a voice whispering, “If it were really so serious, someone would stop us.” If we attend to these issues at all, we do so in ways that are petty, tokenistic, comically ill-matched to the scale of our predicament. It is impossible to discern, in our response to what we know, the primacy of our survival instinct.
Black Liberation/Civil Rights:
Income Segregation between School Districts and Inequality in Students’ Achievement Large achievement gaps exist between high- and low-income students and between black and white students. This article explores one explanation for such gaps: income segregation between school districts, which creates inequality in the economic and social resources available in advantaged and disadvantaged students’ school contexts. Drawing on national data, I find that the income achievement gap is larger in highly segregated metropolitan areas. This is due mainly to high-income students performing better, rather than lowincome children performing worse, in more-segregated places. Income segregation between districts also contributes to the racial achievement gap, largely because white students perform better in more economically segregated places. Descriptive portraits of the school districts of high- and low-income students show that income segregation creates affluent districts for high-income students while changing the contexts of low-income students negligibly. Considering income and race jointly, I find that only high-income white families live in the affluent districts created by income segregation; black families with identically high incomes live in districts more similar to those of low-income white families. My results demonstrate that the spatial inequalities created by income segregation between school districts contribute to achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students, with implications for future research and policy
Labor:
Since June 2009 Americans have lived in the false reality of a recovering economy. Various fake news and manipulated statistics have been used to create this false impression. However, indicators that really count have not supported the false picture and were ignored. For example, it is normal in a recovering or expanding economy for the labor force participation rate to rise as people enter the workforce to take advantage of the job opportunities. During the decade of the long recovery, from June 2009 through December 2023, the labor force participation rate consistently fell from 65.7 to 62.5 percent. —Paul Craig Roberts, The Diminishing American Economy (Updated)
FRED Labor Force Participation Rate is 62.5%
Economy:
- Super-rich outstrip their extraordinary grab of half of all new wealth in past decade.
- Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.
- A tax of up to 5 percent on the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year, enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty.
- The richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.
Jamie Dimon Hires Dodd-Frank Hatchet Man to Weigh Suing the Fed Over Proposed Capital Rules Jamie Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of the largest federally-insured, taxpayer-backstopped bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase. Through much of Dimon’s tenure, JPMorgan Chase has also been designated as the riskiest bank in the United States by its regulators. And despite its unprecedented criminal history, the U.S. Department of Justice keeps handing the bank deferred-prosecution agreements or non-prosecution agreements with the casualness of a carnival barker tossing out penny candy. Dimon’s Board of Directors is too compromised itself to reform the bank and fire Dimon. (See here, here and here.) So all that remains as a potential restraint on this criminally-inclined banking behemoth is the bank’s federal regulators.
World:
Arévalo Sworn In as Guatemala’s President After Delay By Right Wing Opposition The delay sparked fury in the streets, mobilizing Indigenous groups and the country’s youth. Anti-corruption activist Bernardo Arévalo was sworn in as Guatemala’s president early Monday after months of fierce opposition from the Central American nation’s right-wing political establishment, obstruction that progressive campaigners and other leaders in the region decried as a coup attempt.
Education, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
The Dictionary Is Too Controversial for Florida Schools Escambia County’s school district was already facing a lawsuit over banned books on LGBTQ+ subjects and race.
Dark Money Vouchers Are Having a Moment The decades-long push to divert tax dollars toward religious education reached new heights last year. As proclaimed by EdChoice—the advocacy group devoted to school vouchers—2023 was the year these schemes reached “escape velocity.” In strictly legislative terms, seven states passed new voucher systems, and ten more expanded existing versions. Ten states now run eleven universal voucher programs, all of which have no meaningful income or other restrictions. But these numbers change quickly. As late as the last week of November, the Republican governor of Tennessee announced plans to create just such a universal voucher system.